What has been your experience with "shadowing" for a new position?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was approached by the EVP of the company I freelance for to shadow a new position for which they think I’m well suited. I’m doing this in a continued freelance capacity, to see if I like the work and if they like me doing it. It’s a more challenging job with far more responsibility and accountability than I currently have. Right now I’m just sitting with this person, learning the work, meeting people, and I’m presented as a person who’s “helping her out” although I was told by the EVP that she would be transitioning out of the position to work under someone else. Perhaps she’s saying this politically so that people don’t panic that she’s leaving until I’m comfortably doing the job.

For some reason I feel cautious about this, and maybe it’s just because I don’t know what to expect from a shadowing-to-hire scenario. To be honest I was so shellshocked when I was approached that I didn’t ask many questions (I didn’t know what to ask), but just eagerly accepted the opportunity. Did the EVP say the plan was to hire me? I don’t even remember, to be honest.

Part of me worries that maybe they’re going to try to get me to do this new job still as a freelancer at my current rate of pay. Which I wouldn’t hate because full time work (40-50 hrs/week) is better than the 60% (of full time) work I’ve had with this company. It would work out for them because they’d get more demanding work out of me at the same rate and not have to give me benefits. Is that fair? I haven’t been fully employed for so long that I don’t know *what’*s fair. I would be within my right to ask to be compensated at the level of pay for that type of work, but maybe I should just be grateful that I’m working at all.

Obviously I need to sit down and have a “review” with the EVP after a few weeks and re-evaluate the expectations we both have about this.

What have your experiences been with shadowing a potential new position. Did you get hired? If not did they compensate you appropriately for the change in position?

Obviously I just don’t know what to expect from this new scenario, so it’s stressing me out.

By the way I love the work so far.

2

Wait until you’re trained up. When they offer you the job, ask for money commensurate with the increased workload. Decline politely if they refuse.

They spent additional money prepping you for the work. If they didn’t expect a rise in cost to keep you doing it, they’re either using you or naive.
TANSTAAFL works both ways.

3

Does the person you’re shadowing have full benefits? I know it’s verboten to ask about salary in the workplace, but if you can find out whether she has benefits then you’ll have a bargaining chip when beginning your wage negotiations.

4

As far as I know, she has benefits, yes (she’s worked for the company for over 5 years), but I’ll come up with some kind of innocent health insurance-related question to ask her so that I can get confirmation.

She did say something to me today that shed a little more light on the situation. She said that a lot of the new people on this team are full time freelancers, because the company hasn’t gotten approvals from the parent company to do any hiring as of yet, and that they would hire me immediately if they got the approval. So it looks like for the time being I’m learning this job on a full time freelance basis. Which is awesome for me right now because sometimes the previous freelance workload was a little spotty and I can now count on 40 hrs/wk.

So I think my strategy is going to be that at the point that I start having real responsibility and accountability as tasks get handed over to me, I’ll meet again with the EVP and negotiate a raise in my hourly rate. And then hold tight until I can get hired.

I have decent health insurance on my own, so I’m covered there. Retirement savings? Let’s not talk abut that… :frowning:

p.s. I think the reason this has seemed a little vague is that it is a little vague. They’re trying to do whatever they can to get needed people plugged into positions here, so they’re making it happen however they can.